Waldina

"The Swing Years and Beyond" September 20, 2008 

The Swing Years and Beyond was a radio program on KUOW, an NPR station from Seattle. It began in 1968 and was hosted by then-KUOW program Director Don Wirtz before he handed the reins to Bill Snoopy who became the first to hold the position long term. In 1979 Cynthia Doyon took over the hosting duties, and in 2003 Amanda Wilde hosted until the last show on February 25, 2017.

There is a generation of Seattle residents that spent at least some of their Saturday nights listening to a thoughtfully curated playlist of music from the 1920s to the 1950s. I was able to connect with Amanda Wilde and offered to make one of her shows available for fans to download. Then, my scouring of the internet turned up two other shows available and have added them here.

Today is the 80th birthday of the singer Mama Cass. I remember those The Mamas and The Papas albums clearly, I was fascinated by the one that opened up and had the split in the photographs where you could put different heads on different bodies. I remember listening to them as a kid, they were my parent’s albums stored on the bottom shelf of the pantry in the back of the garage. Music is one of the largest memory trigger senses for people. The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

Today is the 108th birthday of Frances Farmer.  There is something about her, the biopic with Jessica Lange helped push her into cult icon status for a lot of people, including me.  Seattle girl, free thinker, rule breaker, and getting a raw deal from Hollywood all inspire other artists.  They understand the misunderstood.  She is the glamorous Hollywood misfit queen of all misfits.  I think of her several times a week when I walk by the employee side entrance to to the Olympic Hotel in Seattle, a door I know that she went through hundreds of times in the early 1950’s when she took a job sorting laundry after her release from a mental hospital.  How she must have felt going in that side door when only 14 years earlier, that very same hotel had held the world premier of her film “Come and Get It.”  I think of that aching feeling of betrayal and abandonment and the complexities of mental instability, it must have been crippling.  (It is a similar feeling that I have when I am driving home and pass Kurt Cobain’s old house and see the bench in “Kurt’s Park” covered with flowers and burning candles. Only fitting that I have connected the two, Nirvana has the song “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” in their catalog.)  Last year, the signal box outside Easy Street Record at the West Seattle Junction has been painted with her likeness. The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

Song:  Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle by Nirvana

"The Garden" - CBS Radio Mystery Theater - September 19, 1974

Plot:  A couple discover that they are imprisoned in a peculiar forest inhabited by two beings - a gentle lady and a bad giant. In order to escape, they request the assistance of the giant but soon realize that they committed a grave mistake.

"Sunset Boulevard" - Lux Radio Theatre - September 17, 1951

Starring William Holden and Gloria Swanson

"Thicker than Water" - CBS Radio Mystery Theater - September 17, 1974

Plot:  A tired lawyer is made to take on a murder trial with the defendant adamantly professing his innocence. But the lawyer refuses to believe his client's claims and orders a series of tests to be run on the weapon allegedly used in the crime.

"What Happened to Mrs. Forbush?" - CBS Radio Mystery Theater - September 16, 1974

Plot:  The ghost of a sea captain's wife plagues an abandoned house by the sea, and the water nearby is haunted by the spirit of the captain. A frail child and his family are caught in the tempest.

Today is the 142nd birthday of Margaret Sanger.  We all owe her a great deal of gratitude for the her perseverance for a cause we all but take for granted today.  The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

Today is the 67th birthday of the painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz. He was a badass rebel that stood up for his beliefs, who else has their ashes spread on the White House lawn in protest to the Bush Administrations inaction during the AIDS epidemic? A fucking hero. In 2010 (18 years after his death) the Catholic League successfully lobbied to have one of his videos removed from viewing at the National Portrait Gallery because it is a government institution. It later went on to have full showings around the country and institutions that routinely provided funding to the National Portrait Gallery and The Smithsonian pulled their support. His death at only 37 years old robbed us of decades of thought-provoking beauty. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

"The Swing Years and Beyond" September 13, 2008 

The Swing Years and Beyond was a radio program on KUOW, an NPR station from Seattle. It began in 1968 and was hosted by then-KUOW program Director Don Wirtz before he handed the reins to Bill Snoopy who became the first to hold the position long term. In 1979 Cynthia Doyon took over the hosting duties, and in 2003 Amanda Wilde hosted until the last show on February 25, 2017.

There is a generation of Seattle residents that spent at least some of their Saturday nights listening to a thoughtfully curated playlist of music from the 1920s to the 1950s. I was able to connect with Amanda Wilde and offered to make one of her shows available for fans to download. Then, my scouring of the internet turned up two other shows available and have added them here.